Respiratory Therapist Job Description: Duties, Requirements, Template & Pay (2026)
A respiratory therapist manages the airway and the ventilator — assessing patients, running therapies, responding to codes and rapid responses, and weaning patients off support. This page has a respiratory therapist job description template you can copy, the credential lines that belong in it, what therapists are paid by setting, and why this is one of the most expensive frontline healthcare roles to advertise for.
What a respiratory therapist does
Eighty percent of respiratory therapists work in hospitals, and inside a hospital the job is defined by the assignment rather than the title. A therapist on a medical-surgical floor runs nebuliser treatments, incentive spirometry, oxygen titration, airway clearance and patient education across a large patient load. A therapist in the ICU manages ventilators — setup, settings, weaning trials, extubation, arterial blood gases and the daily round with intensivists. In the emergency department and on the code team the job is intubation support, emergency airway management and transport of unstable patients. In the NICU it is a specialty of its own.
That variation is the reason so many respiratory therapist postings underperform. A generic description that lists every modality tells a therapist nothing about the job, while the two things they are actually deciding on — the assignment and the ratio — are missing. Say which units the role covers, say how many patients or ventilators a therapist carries on a shift, and say how the rotation works.
The credential path is short relative to the responsibility, which shapes the market. BLS puts the typical entry-level education at an associate degree, and therapists are licensed in every state except Alaska. Most enter with the CRT credential and many hold, or are expected to obtain, the RRT.
Respiratory therapist job description template
Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and delete what does not apply. It is written for an acute-care hospital role; the customization section covers ICU and NICU specialties, skilled nursing, home care and sleep.
Job title
Respiratory Therapist (RRT/CRT) — [ICU / Acute Care / NICU / Nights], [Facility name], [City, ST]
Summary
[Facility name] is hiring a respiratory therapist for [unit or rotation] at our [00]-bed [community / teaching / critical access] hospital. Shifts are [12-hour days / nights / a rotation], [0] shifts a [week/pay period], with a typical assignment of [00] patients or [00] ventilators. Pay is [$00.00–$00.00] an hour depending on experience and credential, plus [night, weekend and on-call differentials] and [a sign-on bonus of [$0,000]]. [State] license and [CRT / RRT] required; [we pay for the RRT and for specialty credentials].
Responsibilities
- Assess patients and deliver respiratory therapy per protocol and physician order
- Manage mechanical ventilation: setup, settings, weaning trials, extubation and troubleshooting
- Perform and interpret arterial blood gases and adjust therapy accordingly
- Administer aerosolised medication, airway clearance, oxygen therapy and non-invasive ventilation
- Respond to codes, rapid responses and emergency airway calls; assist with intubation
- Support intra- and inter-facility transport of ventilated patients
- Run pulmonary function and bedside diagnostics [where applicable]
- Educate patients and families on inhaler technique, home oxygen and airway clearance
- Document accurately in [EHR] and hand over clearly at shift change
Requirements
- Current [state] respiratory care license [or eligibility — we support licensure by endorsement]
- Associate degree from a CoARC-accredited respiratory therapy program
- NBRC credential: [CRT required, RRT preferred / RRT required]
- Current BLS; [ACLS, PALS, NRP as required for the assignment]
- Able to work [12-hour shifts, nights, weekends and holidays] and to lift and reposition patients
Preferred
- [00] years of acute-care or ICU experience
- [NPS, ACCS or other NBRC specialty credential]
- Experience with [ventilator platforms] and [EHR]
- Transport or ECMO experience
Pay and benefits
- [$00.00–$00.00] an hour with [night / weekend / on-call] differentials
- [Sign-on bonus of [$0,000] with a [00]-month commitment]
- [We pay for RRT, specialty credentials and continuing education, and give [00] paid CE days]
- [Health, dental and vision from day [00]], [retirement with match], [PTO]
- [Relocation support], [tuition reimbursement], [self-scheduling or a published rotation]
How to apply
[Apply here / text RT to 00000 / call [name] at [number]]. We reply to every application within [24] hours and can arrange a unit walk-through before you decide.
Requirements: what is required, what is preferred, and what costs you applicants
This is a licensed role, so the requirements are genuinely narrow — which makes the few discretionary lines disproportionately important. With around 8,600 openings a year nationally, most hospitals are recruiting from a pool of therapists who currently work at another hospital.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| State license | Required in every state except Alaska, where national certification is recommended instead. The lever is not the requirement but the process: a licensed therapist moving from another state is a live candidate if you handle endorsement and pay the fee. Say so in the posting. |
| CRT versus RRT | Requiring the RRT at hire is the most consequential choice in the posting. CRT is the entry-level NBRC credential and RRT the advanced one, and employers may require the RRT at hire or within a set period. If you can accept a CRT and fund the RRT, you widen the pool materially and gain a retention hook. |
| CoARC-accredited program | Effectively implied by licensure and worth stating once. Do not turn it into a paragraph. |
| Experience | The line worth examining hardest. New graduates are a large share of the available pool every spring. A hospital with a structured orientation can hire them; a unit with one therapist on nights cannot. Say which you are, and if you run a new-grad program, put it in the title. |
| ACLS, PALS, NRP | Assignment-specific. Ask for what the assignment needs and offer to pay for the rest. Listing all three by default excludes therapists who simply have not needed one yet. |
| Specialty credentials (NPS, ACCS) | Preference and differential pay, not a gate, unless the role is genuinely NICU-only. |
| Shift pattern and ratio | Not a requirement, but the two facts a therapist will ask about first. Ventilator load per therapist is the single most predictive number for whether an experienced RT stays, and almost no posting includes it. |
Respiratory therapist duties, written for a posting
A duties list that recites every modality is a curriculum, not a job. What a therapist wants from the posting is the shape of the shift: which units, how many therapists on at once, who covers codes, whether there is a dedicated transport therapist, whether the role floats, and what happens overnight.
Say what is protocol-driven and what is order-driven. Therapist-driven protocols are a meaningful professional draw and a signal that the department is respected; if you have them, name them. If you do not, do not pretend.
Keep the list to eight or nine lines and order it by how much of the shift each takes. Include the unglamorous parts — equipment checks, machine cleaning, charting, stocking — and if the therapist also runs EKGs or covers the sleep lab, say that in the posting rather than in week one.
How to customize it by setting
Acute care hospital, adult
Lead with bed count, unit mix, shifts and assignment ratio. Say whether the role is ICU-weighted or floor-weighted, and whether therapists rotate. Name the ventilator platforms — it is a small but real signal of competence to an experienced candidate.
Intensive care and ECMO
Name the ICU type and the acuity, the therapist-to-ventilator ratio, and whether the role is part of an ECMO or transport team. This is a specialist market and the posting should read as one; therapists who want this work will not respond to a general acute-care ad.
Neonatal and pediatric
Say the level of the NICU and the credential expectation. NPS-credentialed therapists are a small and specific population who search for exactly this, so put it in the title.
Skilled nursing and long-term acute care
The honest pitch: lower acuity, longer patient relationships, more trach and vent management, and often more predictable hours. BLS puts median pay in nursing care facilities at $79,270 against $82,730 in hospitals, so the gap is smaller than most therapists assume — say the number if it is competitive.
Home care, sleep and pulmonary rehab
These roles compete on hours and autonomy, not pay. Say the driving radius, the caseload and the on-call structure, and be direct that the work is education-heavy. Therapists leaving bedside for schedule reasons are the audience.
What it costs to reach respiratory therapists on social
Allied health is the second-most expensive role family in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark: across 23 allied health and imaging campaigns the median cost per applicant was $54.37, with a middle half spanning $10.27 to $106.51, a blended figure of $25.49, a 10% apply rate and a 1.01% click-through rate. The wider healthcare and senior living sector — 553 campaigns — ran a $15.42 median at a 16% apply rate and the highest CPM of any sector, $25.18.
The reason is structural, and it is worth saying plainly: the audience is tiny, licensed and almost entirely employed. Two things follow for the campaign. First, the apply rate carries everything — across all 891 campaigns, under 10% conversion costs $53.77 an applicant and over 20% costs $4.41, and allied health sits at the wrong end of that at 10%. Second, frequency compounds fast in a small audience: past three impressions a month the median cost per applicant roughly doubles. For a role like this, the money is better spent making the offer specific — ratio, shift, differentials, funded credentials — than on more impressions of a vague one.
If the pipeline is the harder problem, see healthcare recruiting strategies and the healthcare workforce shortage, which covers what is actually driving the vacancy rather than the vacancy itself.
Writing the ad version
The description is the document; the advertisement is read on a phone by a therapist mid-shift. It needs the credential requirement, the shift pattern, the assignment ratio and the rate — in that order — and it should say within the first two lines whether a CRT can apply. Our campaign data puts the best-converting length at 201–400 words.
Keep the form to four questions: credential held, state license status, shift preference, start date. A licensed candidate who is asked for an employment history and license numbers before a conversation will close the tab, and at $54 an applicant that is an expensive tab.
What respiratory therapists earn, by setting
The national median was $39.56 an hour, $82,280 a year in May 2025 — the highest of any role in this batch of frontline healthcare descriptions, and the reason therapists move for staffing rather than for pay.
| Industry | Median annual pay (May 2025) | Share of therapists employed |
|---|---|---|
| Hospitals (state, local and private) | $82,730 | 80% |
| Nursing care facilities | $79,270 | 4% |
| Offices of physicians | $77,890 | 3% |
The spread is the narrowest in frontline healthcare — under $5,000 a year between the top and bottom settings — and eight in ten therapists work in the same one. That has a direct consequence for recruiting: you cannot out-pay the hospital across town by enough to matter, so the competitive ground is staffing ratio, shift pattern, scheduling control, funded credentials and whether the department has a say in its own protocols.
Employment is projected to grow 9% from 2025 to 2035 — much faster than average — with about 8,600 openings a year. That is strong growth against a small base, which is precisely the combination that makes a role expensive to hire for: demand rising, pool small, and every candidate already employed.
Respiratory therapist interview questions
These respiratory therapist interview questions are for the manager or lead therapist doing the hiring. The credential and license already tell you the candidate passed the NBRC exams; the interview is for finding out how they think at 3 a.m. with a deteriorating patient and a busy assignment. Ask every candidate the same questions, and score the answers the same way. Our interview scorecard template has a rubric you can adapt.
1. “Walk me through how you would assess a patient who has just been placed on a ventilator.”
Why ask: it shows whether the candidate has a system. Strong answer: starts at the patient (chest rise, breath sounds, color, comfort), then the airway and tube position, then the settings and alarms, then the numbers: blood gas, SpO2, pressures. Weak answer: starts and ends with the ventilator screen.
2. “Tell me about a time a patient you were treating started to deteriorate. What did you notice first, and what did you do?”
Listen for an early, specific sign, a clear escalation to the nurse, provider or rapid response team, and documentation afterward. Candidates who waited to be certain before calling are the risk you are screening for.
3. “A physician writes an order you think is wrong for the patient. How do you handle it?”
Good answers describe checking the patient and the data, talking to the provider directly with a clear reason, and using the chain of command if the concern stands. If your department runs therapist-driven protocols, this question also shows who will use them well.
4. “You have a code called, two breathing treatments due and a vent check overdue. What do you do?”
There is no single right answer. You want prioritization by risk, communication with the other therapists or the charge therapist, and handing off what can be handed off rather than silently skipping it.
5. “How do you decide a patient is ready for a spontaneous breathing trial, and what makes you stop it?”
For ICU roles this is the core clinical question. Strong candidates name readiness criteria and failure signs and describe working with the team on the plan. A vague answer is a reason to probe further before an ICU placement.
6. “How do you teach a patient going home on oxygen or a new inhaler?”
Listen for teach-back, plain language and checking technique rather than just explaining it. This matters most for floor, home care and pulmonary rehab roles.
7. “Tell me about equipment that failed or alarmed during a case. What did you do?”
Patient first (bag the patient, switch to backup), then troubleshooting, then reporting and taking the device out of service. The order is the answer.
8. “Which shifts, units and rotations are you looking for?”
Ask it plainly, and tell them your real assignment ratio, call and floating. A mismatch here is found cheaply in the interview and expensively in week six.
Scoring and questions to avoid
Score each answer 1 to 4 against what a strong answer looks like before you meet the candidate, not after. Keep questions to the job: asking about age, pregnancy, childcare, religion or health conditions creates legal exposure without telling you anything about clinical judgment. See illegal interview questions for the full list, and situational interview questions for building more scenarios like the ones above.
Frequently asked questions
What does a respiratory therapist do?
A respiratory therapist assesses patients with breathing problems and delivers the treatment: aerosolised medication, oxygen therapy, airway clearance, non-invasive ventilation and mechanical ventilation management including setup, weaning and extubation. They draw and interpret arterial blood gases, respond to codes and emergency airway calls, support transport of ventilated patients, run diagnostics, educate patients and families, and document in the medical record.
What qualifications does a respiratory therapist need?
An associate degree from an accredited respiratory therapy program is the typical entry-level education, plus a state license — required in every state except Alaska, where national certification is recommended. Therapists hold an NBRC credential: CRT at entry level and RRT as the advanced credential, which some employers require at hire or within a set period.
How much do respiratory therapists make?
The national median was $39.56 an hour, or $82,280 a year, in May 2025 (BLS). By setting, hospitals pay a median of $82,730, nursing care facilities $79,270 and offices of physicians $77,890 — an unusually narrow spread, which is why therapists move for staffing and schedule rather than for pay.
What is the difference between a CRT and an RRT?
Both are NBRC credentials. The CRT, Certified Respiratory Therapist, is the entry-level credential; the RRT, Registered Respiratory Therapist, is the advanced one. Employers may require the RRT before hiring or expect it to be obtained within a specified timeframe. Accepting a CRT and paying for the RRT is one of the few genuine ways to widen the candidate pool for this role.
What should a respiratory therapist job description include?
The units the role covers, the shift pattern, and the assignment ratio in patients or ventilators per therapist; the license and credential requirement stated precisely, including whether a CRT can apply; the pay range with differentials; eight or nine responsibilities including ventilator management, blood gases and code response; the certifications the assignment needs; what you pay for; and a clear way to apply.
Do respiratory therapists work in ICU?
Often, yes — ICU is where ventilator management concentrates, and many therapist roles are ICU-weighted or rotate through it. Others cover medical-surgical floors, emergency departments, NICU, transport or a mix. Because the assignment defines the job, a posting should name which units the role covers rather than listing every modality.
Why are respiratory therapists so hard to hire?
Because demand is growing 9% over the decade against a base of only 142,000 therapists, with around 8,600 openings a year, and because pay barely varies between settings so there is little to out-bid with. In our own campaign data allied health roles cost a median $54.37 per applicant at a 10% apply rate — the audience is small, licensed and already employed.
Can you hire new graduate respiratory therapists?
Yes, and for many hospitals it is the only reliable way to staff. New graduates arrive in predictable cohorts each spring, usually with a CRT, and a department with a structured orientation and preceptor cover can absorb them. A single-therapist night shift cannot. If you run a new-graduate program, say so in the job title — it is the clearest possible signal to the largest available group of candidates.
Other job description templates
Hiring respiratory therapists?
The description is the document. Reaching licensed therapists who are already on somebody's schedule is the job. That is what we run.
Pay, employment, outlook and licensure figures: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Respiratory Therapists (May 2025 wage data, 2025–35 projections). Cost-per-applicant, apply-rate and frequency figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, 891 campaigns and 1,334 campaign-months.